Jeff Stevenson
“Right Between the Eyes”
Collaged Oil Portrait Paintings, Assemblage
Cut and combined paintings of strangers’ selfies from social media and dating sites
Although my paintings are highly personal – exploring themes of masculinity, sexuality, and belonging – they also connect to a collective consciousness, the idea that we are all in this together. By first painting a portrait with a precious, refined surface of brushwork, time and attention and then cutting, destroying, fracturing and fragmenting it, I want to instill a sense of loss and mourning in the work. Ultimately pieces are reassembled into new, pleasing and compelling compositions that hopefully still contain the story of how they were made.
I want to provide the viewer with a challenging and satisfying experience with a familiarity that comes with portrait paintings, combined with an unsettling novelty that invokes new thoughts, ideas, and possibilities. The objects that often appear within the assemblage compositions call into question assumptions about identity, cultural constructs, and the human experience.
Simultaneously presenting two portraits that are interrupting each other causes our minds to attempt to complete the images, without holding either image in its entirety. I find that making paintings from found selfies is particularly contemporary, taking disposable images and ensconcing them in the tradition of oil portrait painting, building a bridge between our current era of ephemeral digital proliferation and our rich Art History.
When we are alone, taking our own picture in front of a computer screen, a mirror, or with our phone, it is a solitary, non-social behavior. As we craft our online profile, cultivating an image of ourselves to present to others, it is often done in solitude. I began by collecting and painting strangers’ selfies that showed evidence of these characteristics and moments of isolation.
The divided self is what our online profiles are about — the curated, public self, versus the authentic, or at least private, self. These collaged paintings speak to the anxiety that the self-as-curated-persona creates: the anxiety of not just projecting a ‘self’ that matches how we see ourselves in public, but also one that doesn’t betray our authentic, private self. This is particularly poignant in the online dating realm. How do we craft this presented self that, if things go well, will seamlessly transition to the authentic, private self? We showcase ourselves in the hopes of attracting someone, but we can’t be too ‘crafted’ or the whole game is lost. The rise of social media has in some ways led to a crisis of identity.
We are the product and the consumer. These paintings explore the idea of choice overload as we craft our own profiles to stand out in the market, and review the created identities of others wondering if there is a better model, a better match, one with more features, something new and exciting. Fear of missing out, comparison of lifestyles and experiences, and filtered photos fuel the marketplace of on-line identity development and branding.